The Shimmering Sewage

Image Credit

For those of you not familiar with the term: septic tank. . . it is a holding device that accepts the gray water and sewage in a residence not served by city septic service lines.  Tanks are served by drainage channels that help siphon off overflow, etc.

With this opener, I bet you're dying to read more.   I can hear you now,
 "Great!  She's writing about sewage.  How pleasant?!"

It's not pleasant but it is inescapable.    Into each life, a little sewage must fall.

Can sewage shimmer?  I want my Saturdays to shimmer with potential, with the supernatural, the miraculous. This Saturday seems to be mired in a stinky cesspool of limited options and borderline despair.  Life sometimes does a wonderful job of crapping on one's happy especially if a significant portion of that happiness has been an illusion.

While there is a bit part of me that longs for an eternal, mystical youth that floats along on pixie dust and gossamer wings, it just isn't my destiny.  There is no pixie dust and no gossamer wing is going to hold me up.  No, if I'm to discover the shimmer, the magic, the mystical in my daily life, I'm going to have to look for it while face down in a nasty mud puddle into which a little sewage has seeped.

When I was a kid, my Grandma Laux's ("Gram" to me) house had a small drainage ditch that ran outside of the  bathroom.  It came up along side a lovely flower bed complete with a metal wishing well.  The grass on the banks of this small trench was always lush and green.  It seems the kind of place the fairies would have played.  But this ditch was not the stuff of fantasy.  It was sewage draining from the bathroom.  It often smelled foul and occasionally, we'd step in in and cover our tennis shoes or bare feet with its nasty gray goo.  Then, with much noise and drama, we'd race to the outside water faucet and rinse off our foot/shoe (or feet/shoes if you were so lucky) loudly squealing:

"YUCK,  OOH . . . DISGUSTING!"

I'd forgotten all about that ditch until now.  The memory is so strong that I can even smell that ditches peculiar and unpleasant odor.

That memory rapidly rolls into another.

When still quite small and living on my Grandparents farm after they'd moved to town, the septic tank began to bubble.  Outside the bathroom, under a large fir tree, the most amazing lifting of sod occurred.  Somehow, the septic tank burst its confinement underground.  The collecting gases and matter caused the sod above the tank to rise in a perfect mound.   Threatened with a certain horrible death if I walked across it, I studied this spot from a safe distance, occasionally tossing a rock or branch on top of the bulging earth.  Sometimes it would ripple.  Some fascinating and frightening alien seemed to simmer just below the surface, just out of view.  Danger can be very enticing.

I don't remember what happened to the rising mound.  Was the tank replaced?  I have no idea, but I do know that I never walked over that spot and never had to face that certain and horrible death by sewage.  Well, at least not literally.  Psychologically, I'm convinced that I've experienced several "deaths by sewage."

In writing this, I have learned that sewage may play just as important a role, if not a more important role, in my life than shimmering.  While I do believe that a little shimmering in life is a good and healthy thing, maybe, just maybe, learning to deal well with sewage is more important.

Keeping it Weird

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

—
Author Unknown  

 

It this isn't mutual weirdness, I don't know what is. I present to you, Mr. and Mrs. Weird.

 

Good-Enough or Just Plain Awful?

Shimmering Saturday

Today, the line separating myself from good-enough mom and an awful mom is only a slender, hair-like fiber.  It's not even three p.m. and I've yelled at my son several times.  Earlier this morning, we started the day like we start most days.  I remind him of what needs to be done as part of his morning routine.  He says, "Ok" and then does nothing.  We play this ritual out almost every morning.  This morning, I was very tired of the sound of my own nagging.  What I'm doing isn't working and I'm not too happy with myself.  After all, I've got a lot of years, water under the bridge and "the turbo witch" advantage on my side.  I should be able to outfox an 11-year-old boy.

Unfortunately, the better mom in me must be "out of the building".  After he finally dresses, (I don't think I ever got him to brush his teeth.) he tells me he has to run down to the culdesac.  He left his wallet there yesterday.  This news was like gasoline on the simmering fires of frustration.  Inside, I'm panicking.  How am I going to prepare this kid for the real world?  His survival skills stink.  His coping skills aren't any better and his inability to focus on the hundreds of important details that fill each day is driving his parents more than a little crazy.

I haven't given up the struggle without a fight.  I've done charts, picture charts, social stories, flash cards, laminated lists, prayer and occasional cussing under my breath.  The chaos in his bedroom alone makes me want to race to the local tavern for happy hour where I hang out all evening.  Well, a girl can dream can't she?  Walking on a layer of Legos, assorted DVD's, clothing and God-knows-what sends nightmarish shivers up and down my spine.

I've labeled drawers, containers, bins.  I'm made charts of where things go.  I've provided incentive in the form of good-choice quarters.   I've made compliance and cooperation a necessary component in earning the right to play video games or go to some desired place.  Despite all these "good mom" strategies, despite all I know about child psychology (mostly from personal experience) when he told me he left his wallet out all night, the words that fall out of my mouth are:
"A. . .that's probably one of the stupidest things you've done in a long time."
Lines like that won't earn me any parenting excellence prizes.  His face falls.  He looks at me and with a quavering voice says, "I don't know why you have to be so mean?"

He has nailed it.  I was pretty mean.  Now, in my defense, my calm and cool exterior had taken a beating.  This mornings nag fest really did some damage.  I started thinking about the last time I had a real break.  I thought about how difficult it can be to raise a "special needs kid."  He is definitely special needs no matter how often I try to pretend otherwise.   For over 15 years, my husband and I have never had more than several hours to ourselves.  Now, with money absent from our lives, we couldn't afford to go any where any way.  But again, I can dream can't I?

The Good-Enough mom loves her children for who they are.  I wouldn't trade my quirky boy for a handful of "normal" ones but there are days when "it hits the fan" and I have very little "good-enough" mom left in me.  When the storm passed, I stepped up to do some damage control.  I apologized for being mean and told him what really motivated my words.  I am afraid.  I'm afraid I'm not doing a good job preparing him for the real world.  I'm afraid that it will be hard for him to take care of himself without someone like me constantly watching out for him.  I'm frustrated that I haven't been able to figure out a good way to really help him. 

I kept the biggest fear to myself.  I'm afraid that his "specialness" will get in the way of his leading as normal a life as possible.  All this fear, all this frustration came out as anger.  He was the unfortunate target.  As soon as the words, came out I knew they were not helpful.  I knew they could do some damage.  I hated my own faults more than I hated those I spent all morning battling in my son.

When we finally got assembled and took off to do errands, I enacted the "do-over plan".  When we'd get off to a bad start when the kids were young, I'd pick a moment and announce that "we're starting over.  We are leaving the bad moods and morning unpleasantness behind and we're going to begin again."  Sometimes, it worked wonders.  Today, it was the attempt that was most important.  Things are still a little rocky.  Some days are just like that.  Today, my dark side had me saying the wrong thing while the good side did her best to acknowledge my error, apologize and try again.  I guess I'm not as awful as I feel.